Summary: God requires us to plant a seed of finances, spiritual life, and our entire beings.

When we 1st moved here last year, I looked as I drove in the yard and saw in my back yard more corn than I had ever seen before. Then I looked to the other side and saw beans/something. I didn’t realize at that time that I had moved to one of the biggest areas of farming I had ever been in. “Rice capital of the world”, even so much they just put it on the new quarter. Practically everyone around involved in some way with farming, harvesting a crop to sale to the American people for consumption.

When I thought about this, I considered one thing, it all started with one seed. And if anyone should understand the value of a seed, the people of this area should. Without a seed, Riceland employees would have no job, Producers…, farmers… For without a seed, there could be no crop, and with no crop comes no revenue. There is great value in a seed!

**Even more than just earthly value, there is greater value in a spiritual seed. We don’t think much about spirituality being compared to little seeds we plant in the fields. But it all works the same, you take your little part and plant it in fertile soil (ministry of the great commission) and it produces a crop harvest (blessings from heaven).

In 2 Cor., Paul is writing his 2nd Biblically recorded letter to the Corinthian church. This church was very dear to his heart, for it is one that he helped establish in Acts 18 with Aquila and Priscilla. Corinth was a center of pleasure, a great commercial city/city of great beauty w/many temples. It had gained a reputation as a center of lascivious worship, worshipping the goddess of love. There were 10,000 prostitutes attached to the temple of Aphrodite. It was a sex-saturated society, a den of iniquity. **Imagine the apostle walking into this town, appearing to be just another tentmaker, but eager and ready to preach the gospel. As he met up w/ Aquila & Priscilla, Paul began to preach up & down the streets, market places, & synagogues. God had put him in this place to lay down a foundation for one of the strongest churches in the area.

Problems began to arise not long after establishment. Paul preached there for 18 months, he left for Ephesus, where he wrote I Cor. It’s purpose was to correct some of the divisions that had arised, as well send rebuke for some immoralities that were coming into the church. Not long after they received this letter (and began to get back in line), the Judaizers from the outside began to creep back in, proclaiming Paul’s gospel message to be misleading, that they still had to keep all the old rituals of the law. It became so bad they eventually took over the Corinthian church. Paul came down to repromand them, but they wouldn’t even allow him to speak in the church. So he left, wrote a 2nd letter rebuking them for their attitudes. This letter worked, and the majority of folks repented and began to live Christian lives again. So from Phillippi, Paul wrote 2nd Corinthians, informing them of God’s will for the ministry both of the leaders, and of the congregation.

In chptr. 9, he begins to talk to them about his plan to raise benevolence funding for the Christians in Jerusalem who were suffering do to a famine in that land. He explains to them how he has been waiting a year to receive this gift, and the time was coming soon that they would receive this gift. He sends a couple brothers to Corinth to prepare them for this, so the gift giving time wouldn’t catch them by surprise, and it could be considered more of a generous gift than one given grudgingly.

In the midst of this conversation, he begins to compare this blessing to seed time/harvest. He says “whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, generously…” In other words, you were going to reap a harvest comparable to the seed you planted! And if you don’t plant a seed, you don’t get a harvest.

This wasn’t said in a guilt-giving manor, he was just explaining the principle that has been set forth all throughout the Bible, if you want to see a harvest, you must plant seeds!

Our culture has been so indoctrinated with the idea of “survival of the fittest”, hoard up my whole life because of the uncertainties of tomorrow, that we don’t understand the principle of seed time/harvest. Sadly folks on Wall Street believe in this more than even some spirit-filled believers, for they spend fortunes into something that could easily fall apart at the seems, only expecting a great return. Some don’t even work a daily job, just play the market and have more $ than we’ll ever dream of seeing. Ads for gold, real estate, etc. Investing to receive. But it’s all part of the Bible: plant a seed and God will nurture it, grow it, and prosper it, and if you want to see his blessings, you must plant a seed!